Razing of stadium is put off for a year

Plans changed for high school project

CARLSBAD – The high school football team will have another year to play home games at home.

The Carlsbad Unified School District had planned to tear down the football stadium at Carlsbad High early on as part of a 2½-year renovation project launched this fall. But a shift in plans will keep the stadium in place through 2008.

The makeover for the entire Carlsbad High campus, budgeted at nearly $87 million, will occur as the district builds a second high school at Cannon Road and College Boulevard. That high school, expected to cost $95.4 million, is scheduled to open in fall 2011.

Fifty-year-old Carlsbad High, which enrolls about 2,900 students, has been overcrowded for years and is in dire need of renovations, officials say. Classroom buildings, a food service facility, more space for physical education, expanded parking, improved air conditioning and lighting, and a stadium and track are planned.

Both high school projects are part of a districtwide renovation and construction campaign. It is being paid for by a $198 million school construction bond measure that district voters approved in fall 2006, plus $25.2 million in state aid.

Administrators changed construction plans at Carlsbad High earlier this month, partly to reduce costs, but also to lessen the inconvenience to students and teachers during the renovations, said Kelli Moors, the district's school board president.

The original plan called for tearing down the stadium and using the space for temporary classrooms and as a staging area for construction material. That plan would have required renting 28 temporary classrooms for a little more than two years.

The new plan will keep the stadium where it is, for the next year, while permanent classrooms are built on the current student parking lot between the school's swimming pool and the Carlsbad Community Arts Center.

The change in plans will allow students to be moved once instead of twice during the renovations. “It allows teachers and students to move into permanent classroom space from the get-go,” Moors said.

Carlsbad High will still need about a dozen temporary classrooms during renovations and new construction, but that's far less than the 28 originally envisioned. That will save the school district at least $800,000 and possibly as much as $2 million, Moors said.

At Carlsbad High, crews are now retrofitting heating and air-conditioning systems as part of a plan to improve energy efficiency, she said. The work, handled by Siemens, also is under way at Valley Middle School and the district's Carlsbad Village Academy.

The new high school also will be built under aggressive goals for energy efficiency, Moors said.

The Carlsbad Unified School District enrolls about 10,000 students in nine elementary schools, three middle schools, one comprehensive high school and one alternative high school.